


The House Don't Fall When the Bones Are Good

by Chash



Category: The 100 (TV), The Good Place (TV)
Genre: Afterlife, Canon Compliant, F/M, Meta, Spoilers, The 100 (TV) Season 6
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:20:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22623181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chash/pseuds/Chash
Summary: Clarke wakes up and has a conversation with a man wearing a bowtie.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin
Comments: 65
Kudos: 589





	The House Don't Fall When the Bones Are Good

**Author's Note:**

> This fic contains spoilers for both all six seasons of The 100 AND all four seasons of The Good Place! If you haven't seen The Good Place, you should definitely watch it, this fic will still be here when you're done. Knowing that canon is more important to understanding the fic than having seen The 100, and it's also just excellent and you should watch it anyway.
> 
> Also, the premise of this fic is that the characters of t100 have been dead since before the show started. It's not really a spoiler, but I wanted to give everyone a head's up! It felt wrong to not tag it with major character death but also felt wrong TO tag it with major character death. It's a weird one. Also this might contain my most direct ever calling out of Jason Rothenberg. Fun fact!

"Boy, is my face red."

Clarke blinks, shaking herself like she's waking up from a dream in reverse, as if the world she's becoming aware of is the imagined one. She fell asleep last night in Sanctum wrapped around Madi, wondering if she'd ever see Bellamy again, if whatever the anomaly is wouldn't give him back. It was reality the way she understands it: cold and harsh, all sharp edges, entirely too solid.

Here--wherever here is--is clean and bright, fuzzy with warmth, but the panic she knows should be hitting her isn't. All she feels is calm and safe, even as she doesn't know _why_.

"Clarke," says the man. He's older, smiling, with a strange energy she can't quite figure out either. Like a cross between Dante Wallace and Chancellor Jaha.

Nothing makes sense, but someone must have drugged her. She doesn't seem to have the capacity to be upset.

"It's Clarke, isn't it? Clarke Griffin?"

"Yes."

He nods. "Well, I can't apologize enough. It's been a mess in here, the last few Bearimies. We're still working out all the kinks, you know? You overhaul the entire afterlife and you think everything's going well, working fine, but there are always hiccups. Lots of cleaning up to do. Surprises to find. Like you!"

"I need you to tell me what's going on," she says, slow, as she assesses her options. She's wearing a soft gray shirt and denim pants, looking clean and healthy. There aren't any weapons on her, but she could find something. If she could just make herself move, she could get him in a hold. She could do _something_ , if only she could fight her way out of this pleasant fog.

Until then, she has to keep him talking.

"You're dead," he says, matter-of-fact. "In fact, you've been dead for a long time. Honestly, someone should have told you when you came in, we don't try to keep it a secret. But--" He huffs, frustrated but not enraged. Like he stubbed his toe. "You know how it is when you think you had a great new idea and no one else ever thought of it? Well, I did, let's be clear. I was the first. But I thought I was the only one, and then I find out there's some upstart new architect using skin suits to make my idea even better. Or worse, for you. Obviously." Clarke is just staring at him, and he flashes her a smile. "Sorry. Back on track. You're dead, and you've been, well, tortured. For a long time. But we've decided that the afterlife is going in a different direction. We've decided you deserve a chance to do better."

Clarke almost chokes on something that tastes suspiciously like a sob. "Better." Like that's something new and different for her.

"See, we used to think--well, we used to think that human beings had a life, and that was enough. All we needed to know if they were good people or bad people. And that's how it was when you died. Or, well--it's a little more complicated than that, time is weird. Jeremy Bearimy, am I right?"

She can't help the snark. "Are you?"

"I am, but I take your point. I know how overwhelming this must be for you. I've been studying your records and, wow, you haven't had it easy, have you?" He smiles. "I'd like to tell you that this is it. Your fight is over--that's what you say, right? I haven't really studied the language, not really my thing, but you get the idea. If it was up to me, I'd let you into the Good Place right away. After what you've been through, you deserve a break. But when it's your system, it looks bad if you just throw the rules away. And, honestly? No one really knows what we should be doing with you. Not comforting, I'm sure, but your points are all over the place." He shakes the folder in his hand like it's wronged him. "I don't even know how to interpret some of this, honestly. So--why don't you come into my office, and we'll talk about it."

"Why should I believe this? Any of it? You really expect me to just--go with it? You're telling me I'm dead and I've been in hell--"

"The Bad Place," he corrects. "We call it the Bad Place. It doesn't really line up with any traditional versions of the afterlife."

"Fine. How long? When did it start? What killed me? Praimfaya? Alie?"

He looks down at a file. "No, no. That was all part of the torture. According to our records you, Clarke Griffin, were--spaced? I think that's the term. On the Ark. Trust me, we have a whole lot of mess to sort out with this one. Everyone involved is going to need a lot of rehabilitation. But--the hundred experiment, that was particularly cruel. And I say that as a demon."

The lump in her throat is so huge Clarke can barely swallow past it. "The hundred experiment."

His smile is gentle. "Come inside. Have a seat."

The office is unremarkable, like ones she's seen in vids from the twenty-first century, spacious with a few plants. It looks like _Earth_ , the one that was lost, and the thought nearly chokes her.

It can't be real, she just doesn't know what else it is.

"I'm Michael," he says. "I am--I was an afterlife architect. As soon as we discovered what was happening with you, we got to work on figuring out the best way to test you, but honestly, we're still at a loss. What's a human supposed to do when their whole existence is designed to force them into impossible choices? It's kind of a new problem for us. Do we test you on the person you were before you were tortured? After? I thought about just wiping your mind and starting over, but that felt unfair too. So--" He spreads his hands wide. "What do you think?"

"What do I think? I think this is a trick."

He nods. "I can understand that. One argument that's been made is that we should reset the old simulation. The whole premise wasn't bad--you all being sent to Earth, having to learn to work as a group? We could work with that. Throw some challenges at you. I don't know about the Grounders, they might not really work as antagonists. Not that you didn't do a good job with them! Well, sort of. You did your best. And you didn't even know you were dead! See, this is what makes it so frustrating for us. You got worse in the afterlife, but you didn't _just_ get worse. And if we're grading on a scale, well--you were trying."

"I was," she says, soft. "We wanted to do better."

His smile is sympathetic. "I know. You really are in a unique position here. We've dealt with some of this, of course. For the first few neighborhoods, we just took the humans straight from torture to the Good Place test and it turned out that didn't work at all. They didn't believe it was really something new, they were all just waiting for the butthole spiders. We had to reset them back to the point of death or they never let their guard down. But they didn't have anything to lose other than misery. They hadn't made any connections, faced any struggles. Not like you."

"I'm asleep," she decides. How her brain came up with the phrase _butthole spiders_ , she doesn't know, but it sounds like something that could exist on Planet Alpha. They have a time anomaly and trees that eat people; someone from Sanctum could be talking about butthole spiders near her and her brain just threw it into her weird dream.

"You're not, but I understand the impulse. Janet?"

There's a bright _ping_ and then a woman* just--appears. Out of thin air. "Hi there."

"Clarke, this is Janet, our neighborhood information system. Janet, I think we need Bellamy on this. Can you wake him up and bring him in?"

"Okay!"

She disappears again and Clarke sits up straighter, feeling her pulse race despite whatever calming agent is in her system. "Bellamy's here?"

His smile softens. "Yes, Bellamy's here. Everyone's here. But the two of you seem to do best making decisions together, so--"

There's a knock on the door, and the woman*--Janet--pushes it open, leading Bellamy inside. He looks better than he has in weeks, clean and well-rested, dressed in a t-shirt and dark pants. They meet in the middle of the room, drawn together like magnets, checking each other for any sign of injury.

"You okay?" he asks, hands rubbing up and down her arms. "Did they--"

"Drugged," she says. "Or we're dead."

"You are dead," Michael puts in. "But it's okay! Your afterlife is going to get better, starting now."

Bellamy's eyebrows shoot up. "Our what."

"He says we died on the Ark and everything that happened since we hit the ground was designed to torture us."

"Tell me something I don't know," he grumbles.

"What you don't know is that the system has been overhauled and we're giving you another chance to do better," says Michael.

Bellamy doesn't look impressed. "Wow, a chance to do better. We've never had one of those before."

"I understand your--skepticism," Michael says. "I know this is a lot to take in. But this is a chance for us to do better too. And we want to deal with you appropriately. Which is why I'm asking the two of you: how would you do best?"

She and Bellamy exchange a look. "How did he die?" she finally asks.

"Excuse me?"

"Bellamy. He wasn't in the group that got floated, right? What happened to him?"

"Oh. I'm not sure. Janet, do you have Bellamy's file?"

A folder appears in her hand with another ping. "Here you go."

Michael flips through it, nodding. "He was spaced--floated, excuse me--for attempted murder. Bellamy shot the chancellor after his sister was floated with the rest of you, that part they used. Wow, no wonder none of you made it to the Good Place, every choice you had was just plain bad, even when you were alive."

"Why don't you start over from the beginning," Bellamy says. "Catch me up. I died and then, what? I'm in hell?"

"The Bad Place," Clarke supplies.

He snorts, and her heart flutters. It _is_ easier, with him here. "Sounds about right."

"The way it's supposed to work--or the way it was supposed to work when you came here--is that humans have a point total from their time on Earth. Good actions give you points, bad actions take them away. For example, Bellamy got fifteen points for getting dinner for his sister, but lost twenty for stealing the dinner, giving him a net loss."

"Wow, that might be worse than the Ark," says Bellamy, and Michael shrugs.

"Like I said, this is the old system. Based on the points you both had when you died, you were sent to the Bad Place, where you and 101 others were put into an experimental program to test alternate forms of torture."

"Why us?"

"I don't know. The architect in charge thought you'd make a good case study. Originally it was just going to be the hundred victims of the culling, but he decided that Bellamy and Raven would help with the torture. Octavia would torture her brother and vice versa, same with Raven and Finn--" He waves his hand. "You get the idea."

"What about everyone else?" Clarke asks. "Madi, Echo, Lexa. My _mom_. Who were they?"

"It depends. Again, this wasn't my neighborhood, I'm playing catch-up too. Some were demons. Your mother, for example, she was a demon in a skin suit. Very new technology, Shawn was eager to try it out. Madi and Echo, they were reincarnations. Madi was someone named Charlotte, Echo was someone named Roma. It seems that Jason--that's your architect--would keep the original hundred in suspension and bring them back in a new body when he found parts for them. To keep the torture going. Personally, I think bringing Monty back as his own son was just lazy, but he was clearly running out of ideas by that point. He didn't know what to do with Jordan."

Bellamy rubs his face. It's been less than ten minutes and he already looks about as worn out as the last time she saw him. "So, all the stuff we went through, everything on Earth--that was all demons torturing us."

"Well, some of it was you torturing each other. You know, I thought having more humans would make it harder to torture everyone but man was I wrong. Obviously the two of you came out as favorite targets early on, but everyone managed to inflict a lot of pain. That's why I thought I'd give you the option to just erase it."

"You said that before," says Clarke, glancing at Bellamy. "What does that mean?"

"We can wipe your minds, start you over without all the baggage. Your new architect will design a test for you and you'll repeat it, over and over, until you've achieved a high enough score to make it in to the real Good Place. Not to brag, but it's been very effective."

"So why are you asking us what we want to do?" Bellamy asks, crossing his arms over his chest. "If the new system is so good, why are you giving us the choice?"

Michael leans back in his chair, watching them with interest. "To be honest? I'm curious about you. I reset my test neighborhood all the time. They went through so many versions, sometimes I couldn't keep up. The two of you, a handful of others? You have _literally_ been through hell together. And while you haven't increased your points across the board, you've learned and grown. And it didn't feel right, taking that from you without even giving you the option to keep it."

Clarke's not entirely sure when she accepted this was the truth, that it was real. Probably when Bellamy showed up, when it became _their_ decision. Another strange, impossible choice that they get to make for everyone.

"Is this a part of the test?" she asks.

Michael frowns. "What?"

"If we'd really evolved, we'd ask everyone. Take a vote. Let them make up their own minds."

"They can, but honestly? I don't even know where to start with some of them. I mean, Charlotte or Madi or whatever you want to call her? He really did a number on her. I'll let her pick but it's going to be tough."

"You all are a mess," Janet puts in, in the same bright tone she's used to say everything. Clarke had forgotten she was there. "Technically speaking."

"So what's the other option?" Bellamy asks. "If we don't want to forget everything."

"One option is for this to be your starting point," says Michael. "Everything you've gone through in the last few years, you get to keep it. You'll proceed with the test as normal, but when things are reset, you'll return to this point. I think we'll have to divide you into smaller groups, anyway. We can't design an effective scenario for a hundred people at once, not when we don't want to just make you miserable. So if you don't all make the same choice, that's okay. You could forget and everyone else could remember, if that's what you want. Some of you could decide to pick up from other points in the scenario, say--" He slides his finger over one of the papers in Bellamy's file. "After you hit the ground, but before you tortured Lincoln. Before you came back from space. There are plenty of choices, we can be flexible."

It's a heady thought, a dizzying one. Since she came to Earth, there's been so much pain, so much hurt. She could erase everything, start clean at eighteen, or go a little farther, before she left after Mt. Weather, before the world ended again. She could have a real chance to do better, to keep everyone alive.

Except she can't. She never could have. Every time she saved someone, killed someone, it didn't actually matter. They've all been dead this whole time, the real victims of the culling, a bunch of kids jettisoned to save a little air.

"What happened to the Ark?" she asks Michael. "Did they survive?"

"Some of them did. They went to the ground and discovered they could survive. Found some other survivors. Not like the ones in your neighborhood, that was all invented. But humanity didn't end with the Ark. You're still going."

"My parents?"

"Working through their own tests. Expected to make it to the Good Place soon. Bellamy's mother, too," he adds, startling both of them. When was the last time either of them had a moment to think of Aurora Blake?

"What are the tests like?" Bellamy asks. "What are we signing up for?"

"It depends on what your faults are. I'll admit, we're having a little trouble coming up with something for you. It's always tough with particularly traumatic lives. And you all, well. You had demons stacking the odds against you." He leans forward, hands together on the desk. "Here's the dilemma we face: you were forced to make terrible choices in your afterlives. Things that you never would have done in your time on Earth. Or, well, on the Ark. If you come in with your scores from when you died, your tests will be based on what you did when you were alive. But if you keep your memories, we'll have to use the all things you did after, too."

"Genocide is very difficult to overcome," Janet puts in, chipper as ever. "Really ups the difficulty on the tests."

Clarke bites her lip. "So, we'd be signing up for more having to decide who lives and who dies, but we have to do better with it?"

"No, no," says Michael. "Of course not. But you'll have a lot more points to make up. Either way, you'll know you're dead and that you're working your way towards the Good Place. You won't think you're fighting for your lives."

"So what's the downside of starting over?" Bellamy asks, but Clarke's already figured it out.

"We wouldn't know each other," she says. "Most of us, anyway. Madi would be Charlotte again, Echo would be Roma. Lexa would be--" She glances at Michael; he still hasn't given her a straight answer on that one. Demon might be easier than reincarnation. Maybe there wasn't really anything for her to lose.

"I believe her name was Isla."

The name means nothing to her, as one of the original hundred. Plenty of them died before she ever met Lexa, without her really knowing much about them.

Bellamy offers, "Sixteen, good at construction. She was on guard duty a lot. Friends with Miller."

"I don't remember her."

"Honestly, I barely remember Roma. It's been a long time."

"Yeah. There's a lot I wouldn't mind forgetting," she admits.

"Me too." He shifts, like he's pulling his mind away from something else. "Octavia should go back. She must have been in pretty good shape when she died."

"None of us had killed anyone."

"Well, some of us had."

Perversely, it makes her smile. It's strange to remember that she thought some of the other delinquents were so _bad_. None of them could hold a candle to what she became. "Wells would be alive," she offers. "Jasper too."

"We were down to what, six of us left from the original group? Although I guess some of them were still there," he adds, with a nod to Michael. "Just different."

"We'd get back more people than we lost. We wouldn't even remember we lost them."

"You'd be a spoiled princess."

"You'd be an ash-hole." She frowns. "Ash-hole?"

"Neutral territory," says Michael. "Profanity filters are on. You know, we can give you some time. I know this is a big decision. Janet, can you find them somewhere to talk."

"Of course." She opens a door across the room into a bright, sunny garden with a bench. "When you've made your decision, just say 'Janet!' And I'll be there."

It doesn't make any sense, but it doesn't make any less sense than anything else has today. Or even than anything did on Alpha.

If anything, it's annoying. _You're dead and in hell_ should be such a simple explanation. This should be the easy part.

Bellamy follows her out of the office and into the garden. The air is clear and fresh, the garden full of light. There are butterflies flitting from flower to flower, birds singing. It's not the Good Place, apparently, but it's the best place Clarke has been in years. Quiet and warm, with Bellamy at her side.

"You think they're telling the truth?" he asks.

"It would explain our luck for the last--however many years."

"Can't believe Murphy was right."

"About what?"

"He really did go to hell."

It's somehow the funniest thing she's ever heard and she doubles over laughing, barely even able to breathe. Does she need to breathe? If she's dead, maybe she can just keep laughing forever.

Bellamy's watching her when she recovers, a small smile on his face. "I didn't think it was that good."

"It's been a weird morning. Or--whenever it is." She sits down on the bench, and he sits next to her. "What do you think?"

"Feels like a trap. Or a dream."

"I wonder what the tests are like."

"Nothing worse than what we already did," he says. "Doesn't sound like we have to pick between genocide and death."

She gathers her knees against her chest. "There's a lot I wouldn't mind forgetting," she admits. "We could just--start over."

"What do you think would happen?" he asks. "If we just got to be normal friends?"

"You think we would?"

"No, maybe not. You'd go off with Finn and Wells--"

"You'd start a coup--"

"Fork," he says, with feeling, and she actually _giggles_. "Would we just keep making the same mistakes?"

"They said they'd put us somewhere better. The deck would be stacked for us, instead of against us."

"And we'd know we're dead. The only difference is how we think we died. And what we think we did." He leans back, closing his eyes. "I can't believe they floated you."

"Why not?"

"Your mom. I really thought she found a way to save you. And Wells."

"It's a pretty smart political move," she points out. "You can't be biased if you kill your own kids."

"Yeah, they showed us."

"You did try to kill Jaha."

"Well, what did I have to lose?"

"Everything," Clarke points out, with a lurch like a small earthquake in her chest. "You did lose everything."

"I got everything." She can see his throat bob as he swallows hard. "How shirty is that? Getting tortured was better than being alive."

"You don't know what would have happened if you lived."

"I wouldn't have met you. Any of you," he adds, but Clarke feels the weight of the singular.

"You don't want to forget," she says.

"I don't know. I didn't like who I was before this," he admits. "Maybe I wouldn't have as much ground to recover, but--I think I'm a better person now than I was then. Even if my points don't say that. I don't know if I want to be that guy again."

"You'd still get better. Even if you forgot, you're the same person. And it'll be easier. You won't be trying to keep anyone on the Ark from coming down. You can just be a good guy from the start."

"I could, but I don't know if I will."

She wets her lips. "You'd lose Echo."

"I might anyway. We don't even know if she's allowed to come back as Echo, or if that was just--not real. Even if she could, if I were her, I'd come back as Roma."

"Really?"

"If I had the choice, I'd take the life with less baggage. Echo got a really shitty childhood."

"But she has you. And Raven and Murphy and--" She trails off, and his mouth twists.

"I don't know about Emori, yeah."

"Janet?" Clarke says, testing, and the woman* appears again with a pop. "Sorry, we're not ready yet, I just had a few questions."

"Don't apologize. Answering questions is one of the main purposes of a Janet."

"How many Janets are there?" Bellamy asks.

"Each neighborhood has its own Janet. There are as many as are needed. I myself am not currently associated with any specific neighborhood, but I'm happy to help you with anything you need."

"Was Emori a reincarnation or a demon?" Bellamy asks.

"She was a demon. But she really _was_ on your side. One side effect we've observed with neighborhoods like this is that demons become more sympathetic to humans. She's requested to be assigned to wherever John is."

It's a nice thought. Murphy probably wouldn't mind dating a demon, if that's allowed. "What would it be like?" she finds herself asking. "In our new neighborhood? I know you said we wouldn't all be together, but--would the two of us?"

"I think we could arrange that, yes. Assuming you both reset to the same point."

She's expecting Bellamy to ask about his sister, or Echo, but instead he says, "Would it be like when we came to Earth? Or would it look like the Ark?"

"The specific design of your neighborhood would be up to your architect."

"Michael?"

"No, Michael doesn't design neighborhoods anymore. But all of our architects are very talented. Whichever one is assigned to your case will come up with an appropriate setting."

"What happened to the guy who made our old neighborhood?" Bellamy asks.

There's a significant pause before she says, "He also won't be designing neighborhoods anymore." She brightens. "He's also been stripped of the name _Jason_!"

She and Bellamy exchange a look. "Is it a title or something?" she asks.

"No. But we agreed that he wasn't cool enough to be named Jason. That's my husband's name."

Clarke has a lot of follow-up questions about that, but none of them actually feel particularly pressing. They have more important things to deal with. "So, in general, how do neighborhoods work? How many people, what kinds of things?"

"A small group of humans living together in a community with actors from the Good and Bad Places to facilitate the tests. The decisions you make will be--personal," Janet says, carefully. "You won't be responsible for the fate of the world. Just yourselves. The focus is on finding and overcoming the faults you had while you were alive."

"Instead of giving us new ones," Bellamy grumbles. "How good do you have to be to get into this place? A hundred kids got shoved out an airlock and none of them met the bar to go to the Good Place right away? Not even Monty?"

"Octavia lived under a floor and in a prison her whole life, how many points could she have lost?"

"The previous system was flawed," Janet says. Clarke wonders if she's actually capable of sounding upset, or if it's not a part of the Janet experience. "Even if you never lost a single point, you couldn't get to the Good Place. Octavia, for example, had no opportunities to do good for others. So while she didn't lose points, she also didn't meet the high standard required for admission to the Good Place. Which is why things were changed. It was determined that condemning humans for eternity based on a few decades of life on Earth was unfair. We had to start over from scratch."

"So now we just get tested over and over until someone decides we're good enough?" Bellamy asks. "That sounds a lot like what we were already doing, except there actually is someone grading us."

"You weren't able to pass before," says Janet. "Now, you can. You are going somewhere better. And hey, no murdering people! That's neat, right?"

Bellamy actually snorts. "Neat, yeah." But he's clearly thinking it over. "Okay, yeah. You convinced me. I want to start over."

It should be good news, but something constricts in Clarke. "Really?"

"Some shirty guy made us fight each other and even the demons here--" He jerks his head at Janet and she raises her hand.

"Not a demon."

"--think it wasn't fair. We shouldn't have to live with that. How many times did it feel like we didn't have any good choices and everything we did made things worse? We were right. Sure, maybe we could have done better, but it wasn't all our fault."

"So we just get to forget about it and let ourselves off the hook? It doesn't matter what we did?"

"How much worse do you think you have to feel about what you've done before you can feel better?" he asks, his voice so gentle she has to look away.

She finds Janet. "Would we ever remember?" she asks. "Or would we just--everything we went through together would be gone?"

Janet thinks it over. "Memory restoration is possible, if you want it. And once your tests are over, the memories of those attempts will be restored. I'm sure you could request to have the torture back too, or give your future selves the option to decide. But no matter what, you won't lose each other," she says, with a firmness that's impossible to doubt. "The love is still somewhere in there, no matter how many times you lose your memories. You'll keep finding each other. For however long it takes. I'm sure of that."

"Even if I decide to remember and he decides to forget?"

"Clarke--"

"It could happen. If not with you, then--" She swallows hard. As sad as it is, she doesn't know which of her friends would love her enough to keep finding her. Bellamy's the most likely, but she's done plenty to alienate him, too.

Maybe she'd be better off with a clean slate. She could try it again from the beginning, and this time, she wouldn't drive them all away.

"I'm going wherever you're going," he says, startling her from her thoughts. "I think we should start over, but if you want to remember, I'll remember."

Her heart lodges somewhere in her throat. "What about everyone else?"

"That's up to them." His eyes are steady. "I'm done leaving you behind, Clarke."

She lets out a long, careful breath. It really is so strange it is that she still _does_ that. Her body still reacts in all the same ways. "Then I think we should go back. Wipe out everything and just--start over. We can be done torturing ourselves."

"Yeah. I think so too." He turns to Janet, whom Clarke hadn't quite realized was still standing next to them. She'd given them enough space that it felt private, and she just _feels_ unobtrusive. Like part of the landscape. "What happens now?"

"For you? It's very simple. You'll go and tell Michael what you decided and the next thing you know, you'll be in your new neighborhood, starting your test to get into the Good Place. And you'll do that until you pass."

"And then we go to heaven," says Clarke.

"It's not exactly what you think of as heaven. But yes, you go there."

"Can we have a minute?" Bellamy asks. "Just the two of us."

Janet's smile is soft. "As long as you need. Just call me when you're ready."

She disappears and it's quiet for a moment, Clarke soaking up the sun on the bench, Bellamy getting up to check the perimeter, investigating the plants and trees.

"Who do you think will be with us in our neighborhood?" she asks. "If it's not everyone."

"I don't know. I hope not Octavia."

"Really?"

He gives a fluid shrug of his shoulders. "She's my sister and I love her, but--I think it would be easier for us to get better on our own."

"Maybe for you. Six years without you and she started eating people."

He chokes on a laugh. "We really should have figured out we were in hell sooner."

"It wasn't all bad."

"No, not all of it." He clears his throat. "Do you think Lexa will be there?"

Hearing her name is like waking up from a long sleep; Clarke feels foggy and disoriented, unsure where she is. "She wasn't real, right? She might not come back at all."

"Yeah, but if she gets a choice, maybe she'll want to be Lexa. Maybe this is your second chance."

"I don't even know what it would be like. Being with her when there's--" She shakes her head. "No war, no politics, no life and death hanging over us all the the. Just small problems. I can't even imagine."

"Us too, right? We always had that too."

"No," she says, before she's really thought about it. It's so obvious.

"No?"

He's watching her, dark eyes giving nothing away, and she has to swallow before she can speak. "I think about us getting a break all the time."

His face cracks open with happiness. "Yeah, me too."

"What about Echo?" she asks, feeling conspicuous. "If she can come back."

"I don't know. We might need our history to make it work."

"I am going to miss it," she offers. "Our history."

"Yeah, me too. Do you think you'll want to remember? If they give you the choice after all the tests?"

"Obviously. I always want to know everything."

She was expecting a laugh, maybe a smart response. "Yeah, me too."

"I guess we'll find out," she says, with a brightness that she doesn't really feel. It's going to be good. It is. But she's losing something too. Something important.

Nothing she can't get back.

"Ready?"

"Almost."

He reaches down and takes her wrist, pulling her up off the bench with deliberate care, giving her all the time in the world to stay put, to shake her head, to offer any resistance at all. When she doesn't, he smiles, tugs her in with the gentlest of pressure, so slow that by the time he kisses her, her eyes are already closed.

It's not the kiss she's dreamed of getting from Bellamy, not any of the kisses she's dreamed of. She always thought it would be fast and desperate, a dam breaking. Another one of their apocalyptic explosions. But he kisses her like he has all the time in the world, and maybe he does. Maybe they never have to call Janet back and they can just stay here, wherever here is, kissing until the afterlife forgets they exist.

But he pulls back, rests his forehead against hers. "I wanted to do that before we forgot."

"In case you never want to do it again?"

"I will," he says, his certainty absolute. "But I might never get to kiss this Clarke Griffin again. I wouldn't want to miss out."

She throws her arms around him and holds on too tight, and he clings to her right back.

He's the one to say, "Janet?"

The ding doesn't break them apart, but they do turn to look at her. A unit, hopefully not for the last time.

"Hi there," says Janet.

"We're ready," says Clarke, and she nods.

"Follow me."

A door appears in the garden, opening back into Michael's same office. He looks anxious, as if he's been waiting for them on pins and needles. As if this really matters to him.

Bellamy reaches over and takes her hand again, squeezes once, and she says, "We want to start over. Reset."

Michael claps, grins, looks so delighted that Clarke can't help smiling back. "Okay! Here we go."

**Author's Note:**

> * not a woman


End file.
